Sheila Gunn-Reid exposes COP28 in Dubai as a hypocritical oil-and-gas-backed "party" where UAE and Alberta push fossil fuel deals—like $10B LNG exports to China—while demanding $2T/year from OECD nations, including $78B annually (~$5K per Canadian household) for climate funding. Guest Robert Lyman warns of unrealistic demands and the UN’s push to triple renewables (currently 4%–5% of global energy) while sidelining CCS, despite Trudeau’s unfinalized incentives. Gunn-Reid critiques plastic bans and UN’s climate-migration-war linkage, calling it a failed tactic, and urges conservatives to stay united despite leftist intolerance, closing with a call for audience feedback. [Automatically generated summary]
It's time again for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
You know, when the weather turns cold and you need a break, well, if you're an activist, bureaucrat, or politician, November through to the beginning of December, it's the best time of year for you.
It's Christmas come early, honestly, because you get to go to the United Nations annual climate change conference.
You get to hop on a jet and fly halfway around the world and enjoy a little party for a couple of weeks in a city you may never get to in the before times in your other life before you turn to scolding normal people about using fossil fuels to stay alive.
That's what these UN climate change conferences are all about.
I've been to a few of them myself.
I'm not going to this one this year held in the United Arab Emirates, one of the most expensive, exotic, and energy-intensive cities on the entire face of the earth because of their onerous reporting restrictions.
I'm not allowed inside the conference because a few years ago, I asked a prickly question to a Canadian delegate when the conference was held in Morocco and I got, well, the entire company banned from the conferences in perpetuity.
And that ban came at the request of the Canadian delegation.
Yeah, they're censoring me in other countries now.
But because I'm not going to the conference, I thought I would call in an expert on climate economics and policies.
And so joining me today in an interview I recorded earlier is Robert Lyman.
He's a contributor to the International Climate Science Coalition, and he's also a contributor at Friends of Science.
And he is a careful watcher of these sorts of things.
And he is able to break down just how much these bad ideas from these globalists are going to cost your family.
Take a listen.
So joining me now is someone that I've never actually interviewed, but I follow his work very closely through his roles with Friends of Science and the International Climate Science Coalition.
So joining me now is Robert Lyman, also frequently published in the Financial Post.
Robert, thanks for joining me.
Usually around this time of the year, I check in with my fellow travelers in this climate skeptic movement as we approach the UN Climate Change Summit.
Robert, how would you describe yourself?
Because, you know, as I was saying before we started rolling, some of your greatest critics are people who watched Greta Tunberg and decided the world was going to end.
But you actually have, I would say, a generation's worth of knowledge on the issue of climate and economics.
So tell us a little bit about who and what you are.
Well, I'm a retired energy economist and I'm also the chief economic advisor for the International Climate Science Coalition Canada.
Over a 27-year career in the federal government, I provided a great deal of analysis and policy advice to ministers regarding climate issues and other energy and environmental issues.
I'm someone who cares deeply about the need for a fair and open public dialogue on climate issues in Canada.
You know, and that really is the problem in all of this, is that there's just this approved homogeneity of opinions on issues around climate change, climate science.
Do taxes change the weather?
Are my emissions in my comfortable SUV going to kill all life on Earth as we know it?
It seems to be that hyperbole on issues of climate change, as in, you know, we're on a doomsday clock, those are the only accepted viewpoints.
And, you know, people like yourself, people like my friend Tom Harris from the International Climate Science Coalition, people like my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, you are trying to take the hyperbole and hysteria out of the conversation and being treated like heretics for it.
Well, that's right.
And my particular niche in that regard is the information and analysis that I offer on climate policy.
That is how the government of Canada makes its decisions on climate and on the economics of climate.
That includes following the international developments, such as those that are about to take place in Dubai of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
So it's really all about bringing some facts and analysis to bear on what is a highly politicized subject.
You know, and I'm so glad that you do because, yeah, there's just so much hysteria and feelings.
But, you know, the energy companies, you know, the natural gas company, they don't take hysteria in the form of payment these days.
Now, you just wrote an article.
It was published this morning in the Financial Post, breaking down the big numbers of what's called COP28.
That's government and global summit parlance for the annual meeting of the UN, wherein they talk about their plans to control your life through climate policy.
Tell us a little bit about what we can find in your article.
I don't want to give too much away, but you really try to put into context the scope of the dollars and cents of some of the bad ideas that come out of the United Nations.
Well, my article was, in a sense, a glimpse at one of the key issues that will be dealt with during this climate conference, which will start tomorrow and will go till the 12th of December.
In trying to portray to people what's actually going on there, I frequently find that people get confused by large numbers.
They don't know basically what's the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion.
And yet understanding those differences are particularly important to understand what this conference will talk about in terms of the funding that is being asked by the developing countries of the developed countries like Canada to pay for their climate measures in the period from 2025 to 2030.
In short summary, the developing countries are asking for $2 trillion per year from the OECD countries.
And if you break that down in terms of the percentages that would probably be asked of Canada, that's about $78 billion a year that Canada would be required to pay.
And that works out to just under $5,000 per Canadian household that would be asked of us.
Now, and I thought getting the big numbers down to a single number like that that a Canadian can grasp was important.
And shocking.
I mean, we're in the middle of an inflationary crisis.
People can't afford food.
More people are using food banks than in recent history.
Housing prices are out of control.
People are, as my friend Michelle Sterling says, faced in some instances with heat or heat poverty.
And the government is expecting us to pay $5,000 per household to meet their arbitrary climate goals.
It's outrageous.
Well, that's what's being asked by the developing countries.
In fact, I think that it's almost impossible to imagine that the governments of the OECD countries would agree to do that.
Because if they did, the reaction of their citizens, as in Canada, would be to basically throw out of office those who would agree to that.
So that's the ask.
And it's an interesting question as to whether, to tell you the truth, they're really serious about it.
Because it's so far beyond the pale that it may well be that what they're doing is using that as a negotiating tactic in the hopes that maybe they won't get $2 trillion, but they'll get $1 trillion or they'll get some other extraordinarily large number.
So there's another possibility, and that is that the developing countries are under the terms of the UN agreement are not required to reduce their emissions unless they get funded by the developed countries.
And so if, as is highly likely, the developed countries refuse to provide that funding, then that basically lets them off the hook.
They don't have to do anything to reduce emissions they really didn't want to do anyway.
Right.
Right.
Yes.
So make the ask so great that nobody's going to pay it.
So you just get to keep doing whatever you're doing.
And that's fine.
Now, I like how your answer presupposes that Justin Trudeau would ask us before he did anything to us.
You may be aware that I recently spoke at one of the Friends of Sciences annual conferences in which I spoke on the theme of when will climate policy hit the wall.
In other words, when will the costs of the present federal government's climate policies become so onerous that Canadians will simply react against it and vote out of office, whatever government is responsible for that.
And that's a very long story.
But as I'm sure you're aware, the costs that are being imposed on Canadians are very high indeed.
Yeah, and I think we might almost almost be there.
And I think that has to do with, you know, that would explain Justin Trudeau's carve-out of home heating oil in Atlantic Canada from the carbon tax, because I think that was going to be what might break the liberal stronghold on Atlantic Canada, just the cost of living.
But getting back to this climate conference in the UAE.
I've gone to some of these things.
I've run into Tom Harris while I was there a couple of times.
This year I'm unable to go because I'm banned from the UN from reporting inside of their conferences, thanks to the Canadian government complaining about my prickly skeptical questions back in Morocco.
And the UAE has some strong restrictions on reporting, unauthorized reporting inside their country.
So I just didn't think it was worth risking an Emirati prison sentence to report on Stephen Gilbo.
However, some interesting developments are coming out of the UAE already.
And Alberta is doing something similar.
I saw yesterday.
They are happy to take the United Nations money and all that goes along with it to host one of these conferences that can bring in up to like 100,000 people into a city.
But they're also considering making oil and gas deals on the side since all the countries are there and all the diplomats are there, why not take advantage of it and pursue some oil and gas deals, including LNG with China.
I thought pretty cheeky what they're up to undermining their own conference.
Well, that's right.
I mean, I estimate that the cost that will be incurred by all of the 70,000 participants at this conference will be something in the order of $460 million.
You know, that's spent on hotels and restaurants and other expenses that they have in getting there and so on.
So there is a real financial benefit to Dubai and having a conference held there.
But the conference organizers are very shrewd people.
They know where their economic interest lies.
And while they are nominally on the side of phasing out oil production, they have no intention of doing that within the United Arab Emirates.
That is one of their most important assets for the future economic development of their people.
And they don't plan to give that up.
You know, it's nice to see.
It's something Poland did, something similarly when they held the conference in Karowicza.
They put the, I mean, again, happy to take the UN's money, take the tourism dollars, but they put the conference right next door to the Coal Miners Museum.
Case for Renewables?00:12:29
And then they opened the conference with the Coal Miners Marching Band.
And I thought, you know what?
That's some high-level trolling.
I kind of admire that.
And I know the Alberta government is doing something similar to what the Trump administration did at the Bonn Germany conference.
So the Trump administration sent a very pro-oil and gas delegation, set up a pro-oil and gas pavilion at the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
This year, it sounds like the Alberta government is doing much the same thing, saying that innovation is the way forward to reduced emissions and through cleaner extraction of oil and gas through natural gas.
And so it sounds like they're sending a 100-person delegation, which frightens me as a fiscal conservative.
But if they're going there to promote Alberta oil and gas, I'm not as upset about it as I normally would be.
Well, that's right.
It's a wise move.
I mean, you have to remember that this is supposedly an international conference of diplomats and government leaders that are there to negotiate an agreement.
I spent 10 years in the Canadian Foreign Service, and I can tell you that most international conferences do not have 70,000 people involved in them.
What is involved here is more theater than international climate conferences.
And every one of the literally thousands of organizations that are there is there to put on a show and to tell their own story and how appropriate it is that Alberta is there to tell its story and hopefully get a little bit of media attention as well.
I hope they make all kinds of enemies while they're there.
Daniel Smith already is, and I just can't get enough of it.
Now, as is always the case at these things, there's lots of talk about renewables, which I think makes sense if you live in some equatorial place, but it gets dark where I live before 4 p.m.
And yet there's this constant push for renewables coming out of these United Nations climate change conferences.
What can we expect from this latest one?
Well, the goal of the conference with respect to renewables is to double the share that renewables have of electricity generation in the world.
And ideally, to triple it.
And of course, the ways that they want to do that is through increasing yet again the subsidies that the member countries provide for renewable energy production and to ensure that all the countries of the world begin through regulatory and taxation measures to reduce the use of coal and natural gas and electricity.
So it's a carrot and a stick type of approach that they're adopting.
I think that, as is so much the case with these sorts of conferences, there will be a lot of lip service paid to that goal.
But in the real world, although some $2 trillion has been spent on renewable energy investments over the course of the last eight years in the world, it still only represents about 4% to 5% of the world's energy consumption.
So it's not going to replace hydrocarbons.
And the countries of the world that are most quickly growing their greenhouse gas emissions are basically the countries of Asia and so on.
And they know that their economic development, the welfare and standard of living of their people, is dependent upon them having access to cheap, affordable, and secure energy supplies.
And that's not renewables.
That is a uniform statement.
That's an evergreen statement.
You can say that about Asia, but you can say that about Canada, too.
There's also a push for, in your note you sent me, scaling up accountability.
That horrifies me because that means that someone is going to be the watchdog making sure that sovereign nations impose these UN targets on their people.
Yes, it's that scaling up accountability is code.
It's a code for having the United Nations as an organization have a much more intrusive role in its ability to what they call coordinate and regulate the global climate change effort.
What they would like to do ideally is to create a situation where, as is done in the case of the International Energy Agency, the countries of the world would be subject to being reviewed every five years as to their performance in attaining the greenhouse gas emissions.
And the review would be done by a delegation of what they would call energy experts, which are mainly guided by the officials of the United Nations.
So they produce these reports and they would inevitably, in the case of a country like Canada, be a very damning condemnation of what our efforts are.
And then that would be intended essentially to embarrass the Canadian government and to urge it to do more.
Part of what they're also proposing is to have more frequent conferences at the summit level.
Now, they already have one a year, as you know.
But what people generally don't know is that between those major annual conferences, there are over 1,000 other conferences that are held by the United Nations in order to try to generate as much climate-related activity as they can.
And they want to do more of that, amazingly.
Yeah, if it were possible, just sending bureaucrats all over the world to these opulent climate shindigs.
They never hold this stuff in red deer.
That's for sure.
My son lives in Yellowknife, so I'm kind of encouraging them to go there sometime.
Same, same, yeah.
And, you know, there's also this, to use the language of the left, and I loathe to do so, but intersectionality of all these other issues that the UN has their tentacles in and linking it back to climate change.
One of the key subjects of the most recent biodiversity conference that was held in Quebec, it was all about climate change.
You know, you go there to learn about biodiversity and address, you know, dwindling species or habitat preservation, and it's all climate change.
That's all they want to talk about.
So it's not just the in-between climate change conferences.
It's all the other conferences that they make about climate change too.
Yeah, for a number of years, the United Nations has been trying to draw a direct linkage between what they call the biodiversity or the nature issues and those of climate change.
And I think the reason for that is that the climate change issue has been remarkably successful in garnering financial support from governments around the world, while the biodiversity issues has basically not been able to raise that much money at all.
Once you draw this link between improving or reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the quality of the natural environment, you open the door to a much higher level of funding for that.
Unfortunately, this really hasn't worked for them all that well in the past because, as you know, for many years, the polar bears was the poster child of climate issues.
Problem with the polar bears is their population is constantly growing.
And so it's just not working.
And it will remain to be seen how far they get in actually getting people to put more funding into biodiversity issues.
I doubt that it will be very much at all.
Yeah, I've seen them do this too with migration and wars.
They say, you know, like these things, the underlying cause of these things is climate change.
So give us more money if you don't want to see children starve to death or, you know, kids in refugee camps, and you have to give us more money to combat climate change.
That's always what it comes down to.
Robert, is there anything new that is going to come out of this climate change conference?
Is it going to be like the Paris Accord, where it's this big, you know, agreement that we all sign on to, and then all of a sudden I have to have a net zero car by 2035, according to Justin Trudeau.
Or is it just going to be more of the same, just an expensive party that bureaucrats and government officials throw for themselves?
Well, I think you have to distinguish between what happens at the conference and what happens on the margins of the conference and in the national capitals.
I don't think that there will be any dramatic new breakthroughs at the conference.
There will be a number of countries that will announce new initiatives, new targets that they will propose to adopt.
They've been doing that for years, and no country, apart from a few in Europe, has ever retained the targets.
So there's no political downside to announcing new targets.
But as I said earlier, this is all theater.
And the audience for the theater is not the people who live in Dubai.
The audience for this theater are the people who live in the OECD countries.
So what they basically hope to do is to raise the profile of climate alarmism and to put across the case that, you see, the whole world is concerned about this.
And therefore, countries like Canada must do more.
And it'll support the case that the Trudeau government and many provincial governments are already trying to make that more action is needed, more expenditures are needed.
And one particular issue is that with respect to emissions from oil and gas, the conference will try to achieve agreement on the notion that there should be a phasing out of oil and gas.
Now, countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others may agree to phase down oil and gas production.
But other countries will say, well, no, really, there is a way to go on producing oil and gas while reducing the emissions in things like carbon dioxide capture and storage.
The United Nations staff is 100% opposed to that.
And they will do everything that they can to discredit the notion that carbon dioxide capture and storage is a viable way of proceeding with respect to hydrocarbon-related emissions.
That won't play at all in other countries, but it might play well in Canada.
And the Trudeau government has still not finalized its taxation regime that applies, the incentives that they had promised they would give for carbon dioxide capture and storage.
And depending what comes out of the conference, it may make them, you know, move even more slowly or perhaps not proceed that way at all.
So that's the thing I'm worried about coming out of the conference.
Appreciating Precise Work00:04:14
Robert, tell us where people can see some of the very important work you do.
If people will go on to the website of the Friends of Science Society and particularly look at their blog, they will be able to find almost 300 articles that I've published there over the course of the last five years.
And I also have published a number of papers with the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the United Kingdom.
And they have a kind of a special edition that they call Net Zero Watch.
And if people look up those terms, Global Warming Policy Foundation or Net Zero Watch, they'll see some of the longer and more analytical pieces that I provide.
Yeah, I really do appreciate your work because you arm people with facts that they can take out into the world.
People are too busy just trying to pay their bills to become experts in climate economics and you really distill things down to the key points so you can really understand what these bad ideas mean for your family's bottom line.
Robert, I really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
And will you agree to come back on again very soon?
I'd be delighted.
And thank you.
Thanks, Rob.
So we've come to the portion of the show where I invite your viewer feedback.
I say it every week.
So I know this is getting old for the regular viewers, but we are getting new people watching the show all the time.
So just bear with me as I say.
We rely on our viewers because we'll never take a penny from Justin Trudeau.
And that's why I invite you to let me know what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
One of the ways you can do that is to send me an email.
It's sheila at rebelnews.com.
Put gun show letters in the subject line so it's easier for me to find.
I'm not being lazy.
I just get a bunch of emails every single day, like dozens, if not like a hundred or so, depending on what sort of controversial thing I've said that day to make the entire internet angry with me.
Or you could leave a comment on one of the platforms wherein you are watching us here at Rebel News.
For example, if you are watching a free version of the show and you're willing to sit through a couple of ads, I appreciate you for that on YouTube or Rumble.
Leave a comment over there.
I frequently go looking over there for your thoughtful and concise commentary on my work here at Rebel News.
Now, today's letter comes to us on last week's show with my friend, Oil Sands Activist and the man behind Oil and Gas World Magazine and Oil Sands Strong, Robbie Picard.
And the letter is from Vince, who offers a correction.
And I'm glad he sent this to me because it is a good lesson for me to be a little bit more precise in my language.
The outcome is still the same, but I should frankly be precise in my language.
And I'm glad that Vince sent this correction because I want to make sure that you are all using the same appropriate facts here.
So Vince writes, hi, Sheila, just listened to your excellent show with Robbie Picard and would like to correct you on a few comments you made regarding Saskatchewan's plans for the carbon tax.
Vince, thank you for putting the criticism in a compliment sandwich.
I see you maybe have worked in HR before.
Several times you mentioned that the Saskatchewan government won't remit the carbon tax to Ottawa.
What the Saskatchewan government plans to do is not collect the tax on natural gas, which will reduce costs for Saskatchewan residents.
Thank you.
That is right.
So Saskatchewan is not collecting the carbon tax on home heating through their Crown Corporation, Sask Power.
Banning Plastics: A Debate00:04:52
They're not collecting it, which of course is the whole plan.
They don't want to collect the carbon tax because to collect it and not remit it doesn't save the consumer any money.
I should have been more exacting in my language and I'm happy for the correction.
And then he advised me to see the Reuters article titled Saskatchewan Vows to Stop Collecting and Submitting the Carbon Tax on Natural Gas dated October 30th, 2023, among others.
Your comments could lead the audience to believe that the government will continue to collect the tax but not remit the funds to Ottawa.
Yes, you're right.
I take the correction.
I'm glad to have it.
You see that?
Send me a thoughtful correction and I'm happy to set the record straight on air.
I get some less than thoughtful corrections sometimes that are actually not corrections at all, but just basically people telling me to shut up because they disagree with me.
Good argument, guys.
Anyway, this was a great correction and I'm happy to read it on air.
Let's keep going.
Regarding the plastic issue, as you know, the federal government's ban on single-use plastics was overturned by the federal court.
However, Stephen Gilbo, not wanting to listen to a judge, has decided that he's just going to carry on with it anyway.
So Canadians still have to suffer with reusable plastic bags that they constantly forget, if you're like me, or paper straws.
We also have to suffer with those.
Paper straws in our plastic cups.
Saving those sea turtles.
Anyway, regarding the plastics issue, in my view, the biggest plastic waste is around small single-use water bottles along with the plastic grocery bags.
We've made great strides in reducing or even eliminating plastic grocery bags, which have now been replaced by reusable bags.
Yes, it's a pain when you check out and you forgot the reusable bags in the car, but over time, society will change their habits and remember to bring the reusable bags with you into the store.
A great step forward.
I'm going to push back here.
On what planet do the people banning plastic grocery bags think that we don't use them in another form?
I now have to go out and buy small garbage bags for my office, for the bathroom, when normally I would just use my single-use plastic bag.
I'm not made of money.
I don't throw out things unless I have to throw them out.
And I definitely was not throwing out my plastic grocery bags.
I was using them.
I was using them to bring my groceries home and then using them in other forms.
So really, the ban on plastic grocery bags has not stopped me from using little tiny plastic bags, or at least mid-sized plastic bags.
I just now have to go buy them instead of reusing the ones that I just used.
So did we really save anything?
Did we really stop plastic?
I don't think so.
Anyway, let's keep going.
But the single-use, smaller water bottles are a huge problem.
What should be encouraged or even incentivized are in-home water filtration systems and reusable metal personal water bottles.
Let's support the elimination of single-use, small water bottles, the 350 milliliters to one liter size, as the next step.
Keep up the great work.
We're proud to be supporters of Rebel News.
You know what?
Just recycle your plastic water bottles if you want to.
I just, I don't like the idea of a ban uh, because sometimes you want to run into the store if you're out on like, if you work away from home, you can't you forget, and you need to buy a water bottle because you're thirsty and you don't want to put your mouth on a disgusting fountain.
Okay um, of course, you know like, make it easier for people to refill their water water bottles when they're out in the world.
Um, but i'm i'm just against banning things for the sake of banning things, especially when they're recyclable.
Okay, I was recycling my plastic bags.
I look, I don't I, I use a soda stream like, I don't really buy water bottles, I don't um, but there are people who do and I think they should have that that right.
I, I don't think plastic is the pollution the left says it is and, as I said with Robbie, we can just incinerate it and make electricity and look at that, we're recycling right anyway, I love letters like this because um a, i'm happy for the correction and b uh, we can uh, exchange ideas and uh, that's how things move forward which um, which is something the left doesn't want us to do anymore, and even conservatives,
Agreeing to Disagree00:00:57
we can disagree on plastic, and look at us having a conversation instead of just fighting with each other.
You know uh, there's a diversity of viewpoints on all things.
I don't think that there is one acceptable way to think about any single issue which um, is an attitude I think separates conservatives from the left.
And uh, we can.
As Vince says um, we're agreeing to disagree and he still remains a fan of Rebel NEWS as he signs his letter off.
Keep up the great work and we're proud to be supporters of Rebel NEWS.
Yeah, so we.
I can get something wrong.
We can disagree on plastic, and we're still friends, which I love about the right.
I wish the left were more like that.
It's got to be a miserable ideology where you just throw people out of your movement because they disagree with you on one single thing.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, perhaps in the same place next week.